The Target
by Metropolis Kid
Summary: This is just a little look into the way I think HK-47 might view the galaxy. It's mostly just machine based philosophical ramblings as the assassin droid completes a mission given to it by one of the masters it had before winding up on Tatooine. One-Shot


**The Target**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any material contained within this story. All copyrighted content remains the property of the person, people, or organization that holds the copyright. This story is solely for fun.

**AN:** I'm not quite sure what my readers are going to make out of this one. To tell the truth, I'm not even sure what to make of it. But the idea was buzzing around my head, so I figured I'd put it down on paper... so to speak.

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The machine crouched down in the filth of the soiled roof. It could hear the pounding rhythm of dance music below, could see the street way cluttered with pushers hawking their wares. Drugs, sex, and violence... it was all for sale, everything that pandered to the human id: the dark, primal side of their nature. Humans drew a line between man and beast, but to the machine such a distinction only existed within the faulty reasoning of the human mind. Whatever they had built, they were still driven by the same instincts as the beasts; to the machine mind, they were all the same.

Its optics drifted from the streets below to the scope of its long range energy rifle. The target was a good mile away, a near impossible shot for any meet bag to make. But to the machine, he mine as well have been a block away.

The man was a senator, a political rival of the machine's current master. Was he a good man or an evil man? The machine couldn't say. The concepts themselves seemed foreign to it. Organics needed their lines in the sand, they needed to impose some kind of morality on each other in order to co-exist. The content of that moral code wasn't even important. What was a taboo in one culture was commonly accepted in another. No, all that was important to the organic was that someone or something had imposed a set of rules and regulations, a guide book to life. That was enough to satisfy their need for distinctions, lines in the sand, enough to polarize the groups, to define light and darkness.

To the machine, such intangible concepts of light and darkness, good and evil, were inconsequential. They were human constructs that the machine did not recognize. Perhaps it would've thought differently had it's own maker programed it to... but it doubted that was the case. Light and darkness were immaterial constructs, conceived by flawed, organic minds. To the machine there was only power.

Perhaps the man on the other side of the lens thought he had power. He was a senator. He had considerable sway. And a cursory inspection of the room he was in testified to his wealth. He was a ruler, a rich ruler. But power was not found in riches or through manipulation, the machine's current master provided all the example one needed to see that.

He too was a senator and a rich man. But his life did not revolve around the pleasures he could've enjoyed. No, the man was nervous, suspicious and, despite all his riches, grubby. His only concern was in keeping what he'd scrounged out of life and adding to it where he could. He did not own his wealth or his status. They owned him. And he was a miserable, wretched, unhappy creature as a result.

No, wealth and clout were not power. Power was holding a person's life in your hands, knowing that if they drew another breath it was because you allowed it. True power was the ability to end the life of anyone, anywhere. And that was what the machine possessed. That was what it had been designed for and all it really wanted out of existence.

The target was opening the door now, and a woman came to him. They were upon each other almost before the door was shut again. Their mouths were locked together, their hands groping at each other. Was this woman the target's wife? Mistress? Lover? Whore?

Once again the machine didn't know, and once again it didn't care. Such distinctions were merely more organic lines in the sand. They were titles one gave to different people with whom he or she performed the same acts, thus they were meaningless. Nothing more than the organic mind trying to turn something into more than it was. Of course, organics were famous for such dressing up, especially when it came to the act of mating.

Love making, they called it. They built monuments to it, wrote enough books about it to fill entire libraries. They all, each of them, sang its praises. They were fools. How could they not understand that it was nothing more than an act of procreation? Every beast did it. Why did the humans, twi'leks and wookies make such a big deal out of it? It wasn't even like their rituals were more evolved or efficient than the beasts'. They were just as messy as any other animal.

The senator unclasped the woman's shirt and placed his mouth over her breast, and the machine had had enough of the both of them. Gently the cold, mechanical finger squeezed the trigger, until a beam of red light shot from the end of the weapon's barrel. It tore through the back of the man's skull, burrowed through, pierced the woman's breast, penetrated her heart and blew through her back.

"Macabre quip: Two for the price of one."

The target fell lifelessly to the floor. The woman survived a bit longer, gasping for breath as blood pored from her chest. And then she two surrendered to Death's embrace.

The machine methodically dissembled its weapon and stored the pieces in hidden compartments within its own frame. And then it casually made its way back into the club below. Where it would pass through the crowds of gyrating meat bags and disappear into the night.

It was HK-47, the ultimate, perfect killing machine. And it had just completed its thirty-seventh assassination for its current master. For it, _existence_ was good... and 'life' was overrated.

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Well, I hope you enjoyed. Please drop me a review and let me know what you thought. Thanks. ;)

Have a good day, and God bless.

Metropolis Kid.


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